What if main cast disappear ? Cast insurance ? (microbudget indie)

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Not sure where else to post this thus here . Looking to produce my first microbudget indie feature film, all on my dime. Slasher horror, five college students offed one by one, protagonist survives. A concern hit me yesterday--- what if I am 70% into the film, have spent 70% of the budget, and a main character or the protagonist is killed or dismembered not in the story but in real life? How do you filmmakers deal with that? Do you pony up the cash and pay for Cast Insurance (looks to be maybe $1000) up front to insure against such an event? Do you just roll the dice and hope for the best? Are there other tactics you can share, e.g. I was thinking what if I filmed (early in the production) quick clips of each actor saying they are gone and they walk off etc so if i NEED such footage during editing to explain the disappearance of a character who was injured in the real world, I at least have some footage to use for that? Is there a tactic I could or should employ such as start out filming scenes with the fewest characters in shots, or the reverse (scenes with all five characters, then scenes with 4, then 3, then 2 chars, etc)? Looking to film this over 6-8 weekends late summer.
Randall
 
Last edited:
Probably best to just roll the dice unless you anticipate shooting the film over years. Don't over think it to much, if a cast member died during a micro budget production the last thing I would think about is salvaging the production. I would just eat the ten grand as painful as that sounds. Usually you can use work around, a number of performers from Cyborg told me how the director and crew were so pissed at van dam for carelessly taking the eye of a stuntman rehearsing with real knife that they finished the film with a double so he wouldn't be on set.
 
lambert said:
Probably best to just roll the dice unless you anticipate shooting the film over years. Don't over think it to much, if a cast member died during a micro budget production the last thing I would think about is salvaging the production. I would just eat the ten grand as painful as that sounds. Usually you can use work around, a number of performers from Cyborg told me how the director and crew were so pissed at van dam for carelessly taking the eye of a stuntman rehearsing with real knife that they finished the film with a double so he wouldn't be on set.
Click to expand...

Actually several multiples of ten grand, so it would be very painful if I had to eat the lo$$ and I probably could not make another micro indie feature if that were the case. I would prefer not to pay Cast Insurance / Event Cancellation Insurance, will think hard on how the story/script could be salvaged if the worst happened.

My story is 5 students go missing/killed in the woods so hey I was just thinking, as long as i get the initial setup scenes shot (not that much production $ in at that point really), if an actor could not finish out the filming from death/injury/other well they disappear in the woods and I rewrite dialogue that they went missing. :) And i can always swap out the protagonist for a different protagonist should the main protagonist not finish the film (unlikely, this would be a great role for a female protagonist).
 
Last edited:
Randall_Oelerich said:
Not sure where else to post this thus here . Looking to produce my first microbudget indie feature film, all on my dime. Slasher horror, five college students offed one by one, protagonist survives. A concern hit me yesterday--- what if I am 70% into the film, have spent 70% of the budget, and a main character or the protagonist is killed or dismembered not in the story but in real life? How do you filmmakers deal with that? Do you pony up the cash and pay for Cast Insurance (looks to be maybe $1000) up front to insure against such an event? Do you just roll the dice and hope for the best? Are there other tactics you can share, e.g. I was thinking what if I filmed (early in the production) quick clips of each actor saying they are gone and they walk off etc so if i NEED such footage during editing to explain the disappearance of a character who was injured in the real world, I at least have some footage to use for that? Is there a tactic I could or should employ such as start out filming scenes with the fewest characters in shots, or the reverse (scenes with all five characters, then scenes with 4, then 3, then 2 chars, etc)? Looking to film this over 6-8 weekends late summer.
Randall
Click to expand...

and for prime suspect #1, i present to you Randall.
 
If all else fails use the classic roger corman technique, buy an eastern European SciFi musical and cut it into your existing footage. The audience will be so confused they won't worry that your lead disappeared without explanation.
 
This could be the start of an incredible multi-layered interactive film experience, especially if your characters in the movie were cast in a horror movie only to be pursued by the crazed director who also posted on this forum so we don't know if it's a movie or not.
 
You're not especially likely to lose a major cast member due to death or injury, although it's possible. If you're shooting over the course of 6-8 weekends, you're more likely to have to deal with changes in appearance, particularly hair length or weight gain/loss, or cast members simply dropping out to do more lucrative projects.

To minimize this, you're much better off tightening up your shooting schedule. If you can shoot in 16 continuous days -- maybe with 1 day a week off -- then you will be done in less than 3 weeks. Much less chance of someone leaving the project. This also requires less of a time committment from cast and crew, which is always well received.
 
Indeed. Death of a cast member is highly unlikely - look up the statistics of deaths from all causes per 1000 of people in that age range. It's tiny. Not worth spending a lot of time or money on such odds. The odds of other things messing up your cast are far higher - starting with simple flakiness, and through scheduling conflicts and sudden life events. I've seen plenty of those happen - never experienced a cast member dying. And indeed - the shorter the shooting schedule, the smaller the odds that someone will drop out for whatever reason. Sometimes you can do things like move around the shooting schedule to get your key scenes out of the way early on, but that's rarely going to be decisive, or indeed practical. Pay your actors - that's your best insurance that flakiness or "life events" don't have your actors vanish (same is true of crew). But if your actors (or crew) are doing a freebie, then odds that someone gets a paying offer, or simply gets bored and walks off, increase dramatically. Pay your actors. That's money better spent than any Cast Insurance for a production on your level of micro-budget. Take that money and put it toward paying your cast and crew.
 
Also, it's concerning that you intend to spend tens of thousands of dollars on your micro-budget production. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money, but frankly, odds are overwhelming that you'll lose 100% of your investment under any scenario that one can think of... barring lottery-winning level of odds. If so, ask a simple question: would you rather lose more money or lose less money? If you can easily afford it on your own cause you're rich, or can get crowdfunded through something like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, whatever, go wild. But if there is any chance that it would represent a hardship, or you could use that money for better ends, think very, very carefully about spending every dollar.

If you were spending a bundle to get an actor(s) who will make sales easier or more likely, that would be an argument, but in that case your budget of under $100K in toto is simply too little money to get you such an actor - an actor who would move the needle at all on sales or get you a better deal from a respectable distributor. So you are caught in a situation where you have too little money to get an actor who could make a difference in sales (and having a name actor in a slasher is a questionable idea in the first place), and you're spending too much money to have any chance of recovery of funds, much less making a profit. In order of probability - most likely you will lose 100% of your investment; far, far down the odds - a bit of a moonshot, to be honest - you might, might recover your budget if it's low enough, probably not more than about $10K, at the very most.

Next, you may find this assertion astounding - considering that I know not the first thing about your script other than what you said - I don't believe there is any upside to spending, say, $70K vs spending $10K - your film will not have a better look, higher production value, or have better sales potential, or be in any way superior. $500K vs $10K - yes, it might make a difference, but $70K vs $10K? I don't believe it. So if you get nothing more for $70K, why not spend $10K for the same effect? Yes, I know you think you've priced/budgeted it all out down to the pin money, but nah, I don't believe it. It simply means you have not looked at both your script and your production creatively. Ultimately, you are looking for a dramatic charge from your footage. That can be done on much lower budget - through better writing. Which you should be concentrating on anyway - get the best script you can. That's where 90% of your entire effort should go, because that's what will give you the best return. I'd rather watch an involving film that's poorly lit, with wobbly camera and cheesy effects, than watch a boring/uninvolving film with great lighting and amazing effects. I'd put in as little money as humanly possible on the technical side (exception: try to get as good audible dialogue sound as you can afford) - shoot it on your phone if you have to, that's how little importance one should attach to the camera (again, but get good dialogue sound!). Put your effort in the writing. Don't worry about effects - if you structure your scary moments carefully, they can be extremely effective with almost no "effects" on screen. Cut the actors to a minimum and pay them scale. Cut back on crew members. How can so few crew members be effective? Because you wrote the script in such a way that it can be shot with a skeleton crew. Writing is #1.

So I'd set a hard limit of $10K and swing for the fences. Now, you'll hear arguments about how you can't make a feature for $10K... but guess what, in that case neither can you for $70K. On the other hand if you can make a feature for $70K, then you can do so for $10K just as easily. And if you didn't think it was possible to shoot a micro-budget feature, you wouldn't even start - so go make it for no more than $10K. Best of luck!
 
Your biggest problem is the word student. It's not death that is the critical issue, it's career, for them. Students generally have no money,many lots of debt, so you can't take them to court as its pointless. Students will have worse reliability than professionals, but are free/cheap. They will be liable to dropping out, even if they have a contract. They get offered other work that is better, so take it. They drop out of college. All these things impact badly, and make isurancenfor see projects perhaps unobtainable anyway, because the risk is bad. If the timescale is long, the risk also increases. Your takes is to minimise the risk. Exactly how, I can't help with as its screenplay dependent.
 
Anyone making a feature of any size should at least consider Mark Duplass words from last years sxsw. Shoot every weekend with a few people that want to work with you usually friends, than make a thousand dollar feature. I went to screening over the weekend that brought in most of the filmmakers budget(micro feature) in one night, that and presales of digital download. Genre was SciFi horror.
 
paulears said:
Your biggest problem is the word student. It's not death that is the critical issue, it's career, for them. Students generally have no money,many lots of debt, so you can't take them to court as its pointless. Students will have worse reliability than professionals, but are free/cheap. They will be liable to dropping out, even if they have a contract. They get offered other work that is better, so take it. They drop out of college. All these things impact badly, and make isurancenfor see projects perhaps unobtainable anyway, because the risk is bad. If the timescale is long, the risk also increases. Your takes is to minimise the risk. Exactly how, I can't help with as its screenplay dependent.
Click to expand...

Actually he said the characters would be students, not necessarily the actors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top